Green infrastructure (GI) is planned at various scales, including a regional one: city-regions. Strategic GI planning included in the city-regions spatial development policy can contribute to their sustainable development through, among others, providing a range of ecosystem services. In order to meet the challenge of planning GI on a regional scale, the authors present the Method of Landscape-Functional Units (Method LaFU), which is used for the planning and evaluation of such systems. This method was tested in the Wrocław Functional Area (WFA), which is characterized by many negative processes, primarily uncontrolled development of built-up areas, fragmentation of landscape, and declining natural and semi-natural areas. The presented results show the effectiveness of the Method LaFU in GI planning and, above all, in its assessment, which makes it possible to identify problem areas that are at risk but still important for the functioning of the GI system. This allows for quick decision making by entities responsible for spatial planning in the region. The proposed method can also be used in other city-regions.

Public green spaces (PGSs) have a positive impact on the health and wellbeing of urban residents. However, their accessibility can be limited due to high urbanisation pressures and inadequate or insufficient regulatory provisions. This problem has been recognised for Central European cities, of which Wrocław is an example, where the provision of PGS accessibility has not received major attention in recent decades, and the planning system has been in constant transformation since the transition from a centrally planned to a free-market economy. This study therefore aimed to examine the distribution and accessibility of PGSs in the expanding area of Wrocław today and upon implementation of the plans under the proposed standards. These analyses were performed using the QGIS application, network analysis, and the ISO-Area as polygon algorithm. The findings revealed a conspicuous lack of available PGSs, which includes areas above 2 ha, such as district and neighbourhood parks. New PGSs are now being planned, but even so, part of the residential areas will remain outside their catchment zone. The results obtained provide strong evidence that it is essential that standards should be a tool implemented in urban planning, and that the adopted procedure can be transferred to other cities.

The assessment of the suitability of existing buildings for implementation of green roofs is an important research issue, especially in the context of Urban Heat Island (UHI), the negative impacts of which are locally exacerbated by the global warming. The studies carried out so far have covered a variety of buildings and have taken into account a range of different conditions. Relatively little attention has been paid to the possibilities of greening the roofs of prefabricated apartment blocks from the second half of the 20th century in the context of the potential climate effect. Yet, these buildings are found in many cities around the world, and seem in fact attractive for greening. In view of the above, we proposed a three-stage investigatory procedure to: (I) identify and classify buildings based on the number of floors and the rooftop available area; (II) select buildings by designating priority areas depending on the highest UHI intensity and roof density; (III) analyse the roof load capacity to develop retrofit scenarios. The procedure was applied to prefabricated housing estates built in the 1970s and 1980s in Wrocław, Poland. The research shows that there are 1962 buildings of different heights and roof area of 722405 m², of which 480 buildings with a roof area of 122749.1 m² were selected for greening within priority areas. The structure of the studied roofs was not designed to carry additional loads, which requires the application of complementary solutions. Scenario 1 assumes extensive greening provided that the existing ventilated roof is strengthened, scenario 2 –semi-intensive greening, which however requires the conversion of the ventilated roof to a non-ventilated one. The presented procedure can be applied in any other city with prefabricated apartment blocks and available UHI data, and serve to support the decision to implement green roofs to mitigate UHI.

The housing rental market in Poland is underdeveloped and tilted towards temporary tenants, usually students and immigrants. To explore the flaws in the functioning of this market, we conduct a survey among 315 students from two Polish universities. We find that renting is not only perceived as a more expensive form of satisfying housing needs, but decreases satisfaction from utilizing the occupied house due to non-financial factors. Moreover, the perception of the relative advantages of owning versus renting is, to some extent, affected by flawed economic reasoning. Building on the above results, we discuss what policies could increase the demand for residential rental housing.

The aim of this article was to present Sectoral Analysis of Landscape Interiors (SALI). This method uses the idea of a landscape interior understood as a fragment of a landscape perceived from the level of a person standing at a given point. The analyses were conducted in two stages: stage I—the quantitative stage, and stage II—the qualitative stage. The first part of the research was the analysis of the percentage share of particular elements of landscape interiors in the images perpetuated in photographs, taking into account their level of transparency. The second part was the assessment of their quality based on expert knowledge. The use of the SALI method in the context of the analysis of greenery changes over time was illustrated on the example of the landscape interior of the main street in the village of Psary in Poland. The research was carried out at a time interval of 10 years—for the years 2009 and 2019. The results of the study indicate very large changes and loss of greenery (especially trees) and the associated deterioration of the landscape. The findings confirm the suitability of the method in landscape research at a human scale.

Suburban areas are often used for large-scale developments such as hypermarkets, warehouses, and logistics zones, which lead to the fragmentation of natural areas and the visual degradation of the landscape. This study aimed to evaluate ways to reduce the negative impact of these developments by introducing green infrastructure (GI) elements. The analysis focused on warehouses in the inner ring of the planned green infrastructure system in the Wrocław Functional Area (GI WFA). This study involved three stages: (1) selecting a landscape-functional unit (LaFU) vulnerable to landscape degradation; (2) analyzing changes from the development of large-scale warehouses between 2004 and 2021; and (3) assessing the effect of new GI elements using the Sectoral Landscape Interior Analysis (SALI) method. Three models of GI implementation were proposed and evaluated both from a plan view and from a moving observer’s perspective. The results showed that large-scale developments reduce biologically active areas and disrupt landscape harmony. Model III, which includes green roofs, trees, and semi-permeable surfaces, significantly increased greenery and reduced visual degradation. It is recommended to apply the model and its variations in other similar developments for the benefit of the natural environment and landscape.